ELEANOR VS. IKE

by Robin Gerber

978-0-06-137321-3

315pp/$13.95/January 2008

Ever since Hillary Clinton announced her decision
to run for the Senate, scuttlebutt has suggested, hoped, or warned that
she had her sights on running for the position her husband held
from 1993 through 2001. Of course, in 2007, she announced that she would
run for the Presidency, ultimately losing in the primary to the eventual
winner. Robin Gerber's Eleanor Vs. Ike looks at an earlier first
lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, and postulates a run for the Presidency in 1952
against Dwight David Eisenhower. Although it is tempting to Read
Gerber's novel as a hopeful substitution of Roosevelt for Clinton, to do
so would do a disservice to Gerber and her novel.

Gerber hews relatively close to the historical
record until Adlai E. Stevenson's acceptance speech at the Democratic
National Convention in Chicago. When Stevenson dies of an heart
attack as he approaches the podium, Eleanor Roosevelt is dragooned into
running for the Presidency as a compromise candidate. Despite
Eleanor's abilities and charisma, Gerber is unable to make the case that
the male-dominated world of politics in the early 1950s would have
supported the candidacy of Roosevelt, a prospect which seems even more
unlikely given that no woman has been nominated for the office in the 56
years since that election.

For the most part, Gerber focuses on Roosevelt and,
to a lesser extent, Eisenhower. However, their political
machinations are not the most interesting part of the book.
Roosevelt attempts to woo in Negro vote in the South, and, despite a few
nasty incidents, including one focused on historical figure Edgar Ray
Killen. While Gerber includes a point person, another historical
figure, Barbara Rose Johns, Roosevelt's Southern strategy seems to go a
little more smoothly, and a little more successfully than seems
feasible. The fact that much of the activity is shown at a
distance, through polls and reports from Johns to Roosevelt, although
distances the efforts from the reader.

One of the more interesting changes Gerber
introduces is Joan Black, a reporter working for Roosevelt, and Jonathan
Chamberlain, an operative in Eisenhower's camp. Both have ideas of
revolutionizing the way elections are run, and their own relationship
seems reminiscent of the relationship between Mary Matalin and James
Carville in the real world. Unfortunately, both Black and
Chamberlain are support characters, rather than the protagonists of
Gerber's novel. Their ideas, whether the ones that are used by
Roosevelt and Eisenhower, or the ones shelves, make a much more
interesting look at the counterfactual possibilities of Gerber's world
of 1952.

Gerber's writing is smooth and carries the reader
along towards the conclusion of the novel and the political race.
There are a few, minor, missteps where Gerber makes an error in
geography or an anachronism, but these are relatively minor. Instead,
she focuses on the political race, but ends the novel with her
examination of the politics, barely touching on the societal changes
that might have come from having Roosevelt run, successfully or
unsuccessfully, for the office of the Presidency.

Eleanor Vs. Ike is an entertaining book, and
will come as a pleasant thought experiment for those who have not read
many counterfactual novels. However, Gerber makes some of the basic
mistakes in the alternate history genre by focusing too closely on the
changes as they relate to the principles without a full examination of
the wider range of effects the change has. In part, this is due to
Gerber's decision to end her story on election night, but even during
the course of the election, she doesn't really explore the immediate
ramifications of Roosevelt's candidacy or Chamberlain and Black's
electoral innovations.